After the Tsunami: Legal Implications of Mass Burials of Unidentified Victims in Sri Lanka

0494 On 26 December 2004, Sri Lanka was affected, along with many other countries in the region, by deadly tsunami waves. The estimated death toll in Sri Lanka was more than 40,000; many more thousands of people were missing and displaced. Sri Lanka had not experienced a disaster of such magnitude in its 2,000 years of recorded history. The administrative, health, and judicial services were simply not able to respond rapidly to the workload demands created by the disaster. The disaster itself also highlighted gaps in the laws on death investigation and mass burials, which required the rapid introduction of many emergency regulations and modifi cation of existing laws. This article discusses these gaps, and categorises the posttsunami events into two phases: acute and secondary. The acute phase concerns the events that occurred during the fi rst week with regard to the management of the deceased; the secondary phase represents the events that took place subsequently.